They would ask me what actors I saw in the roles. I would tell them, and they’d say “Oh that’s interesting.” And that would be the end of it.
--Elmore Leonard, in 2000, on the extent of his input for Hollywood's adaptation of his novels

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Jonathan Holt's "The Abduction"

Jonathan Holt read English literature at Oxford and is now the creative director of an advertising company. He lives in London.

Holt's new novel is The Abduction, the second book in the Carnivia Trilogy.

Here the author dreamcasts an adaptation of the series:

I’d like to think that not only The Abduction, but the whole Carnivia trilogy, would be filmed. I’m a big admirer of the Stieg Larsson books – that combination of cracking conspiracy plots with great characters – so the pitch for my movie would be ‘Dragon Tattoo meets Da Vinci Code’.

David Fincher would direct, naturally – no one gives heart to a thriller like he does, or at least not since the demise of the great Tony Scott.

Rooney Mara would be wonderful as my American protagonist, US Intelligence Analyst Holly Boland. I’m not sure who would play her Italian opposite number, Captain Caterina ‘Kat’ Tapo of the Venice Carabinieri. I have a very strong image of Kat, as she’s based on a real Carabinieri officer whose photo I found online… but surely finding a raven-haired, impulsive, sometimes strident, feminist Italian in her mid-twenties who’s also a great actress can’t be hard?

“Compared to a novel, a film is like an economy pizza where there are no olives, no ham, no anchovies, no mushrooms, and all you’ve got is the dough.”
--Louis de Bernières, author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin